Ars gets hands-on time with the new Samsung Galaxy S III.

The Samsung Galaxy S III. Though it doesn't really look it, technically, this color is blue.

Photograph by Peter Bright

Samsung today launched its keenly-anticipated Galaxy S III flagship Android phone. We played around with it at Samsung's remarkably expensive and busy event in London's Earl's Court.

The hardware spec of the Galaxy S III is second to none. Quad-core 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 processor (a Cortex A9 design, so essentially the same CPU core as found in the NVIDIA Tegra 3, Texas Instruments' OMAP 4, and Apple's A5, among others) with an integrated ARM Mali GPU, paired with 1 GB RAM, 16, 32, or 64 GB of flash (though at launch only 16 and 32 GB models will be available), and a whopping 4.8" 1280×720 HD Super AMOLED screen. The phone sports a wealth of sensors; 8 MP rear camera with LED flash, front-facing 1.9 MP camera, accelerometer, GPS and GLONASS positioning, compass, gyroscope, and, rather weirdly, a barometer. If 64 GB isn't enough, you can add micro-SD storage, up to 64 GB SDXC.

The first units to launch will be 3G with 21 Mbit HSPA+ support; later Samsung will launch an LTE version in the US. Other connectivity is provided by 802.11a/b/g/n, NFC, and Bluetooth 4.0. The battery has a huge 2,100 mAh capacity.

The screen uses a Pentile matrix: each pixel is made up of a pair of either red and green or blue and green sub-pixels, instead of the traditional red/green/blue trio. Pentile gets a bad rap, because under some circumstances it can make text look a little blurry, or add color fringes to black-and-white images, and under a microscope, Pentile matrices look weird.

But this is fodder for the fanboys to complain about. In practice, the screen looks good. AMOLED screens sport high contrast and deep blacks, and the unit in the Galaxy S III is no exception. The resolution is high enough to leave text looking crisp and clean, and while there may be Pentile artifacts if you look carefully enough, close enough, in normal usage it's simply a great looking screen.

The screen is big, and as a result, the phone is big. At least, it's tall and wide (it's only 8.6 mm thick). But not so tall and wide as you might expect: Samsung has cut the size of the bezel down, so the Galaxy S III's footprint is only a slightly larger than that of its predecessor. The narrow bezels, combined with the light weight (133 grams), and that thinness, make it comfortable enough in the hand, though those with particularly small hands may struggle.

Narrow bezels have allowed Samsung to keep the footprint of the Galaxy S III only marginally larger than the Galaxy S II. It's big, but not beyond the limits of comfort.

Peter Bright

Comfortable enough, but also rather cheap. This isn't the first Samsung smartphone to be built out of plastic, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Plastic is a good material. I have nothing against plastic. Plastic is lightweight. It's forgiving; glass phones smash, metal phones dent, but plastic phones just flex (at least, to a point). It enables a tremendous variety in colors, textures, and finishes. Nokia's Lumia 800 and 900 phones are both plastic, for example, but their appearance, texture, and solid feel have been widely praised. Likewise the HTC One X, which like the Lumia's is a machined block of polycarbonate.

Unfortunately, Samsung uses the same thin, flexible, cheap-feeling plastic on the Galaxy S III as it did its predecessors, and it makes the phone feel like it cost about $2. Since I doubt it will cost $2, this is not a good thing. Both the Galaxy S III and the Lumia 800 are plastic phones—both polycarbonate, so the same family of plastic, in fact—but only one of them feels high quality, and it's not the quad core flagship device.

Samsung says that the phone has some kind of a "hyperglaze" coating, and while it's not at all clear to me what the implications of "hyperglaze" actually are, I do know that the phone comes in two colors: Marble White (also known as as "white"), and Pebble Blue, which is dark blue that's basically black. As an added style element that does nothing to improve the aesthetics of the phone or diminish its apparent cheapness, there's a silver-colored ring around the edge.

Samsung also continues to use capacitive buttons on the front of the phone, and these continue to be as user hostile as always. They're too easy to hit accidentally. I hear that they can be done well; they aren't on the Galaxy S III.

The shape of the phone is all curves; no sharp corners or edges. It was apparently modeled on the shape and feel of a pebble. Samsung is going to great lengths to emphasize how "organic" the whole thing is. I'm no chemist, but I suspect that most pebbles are inorganic (unlike the phone's carbon-based plastic shell).

The "organic" aspirations are most apparent in the software, and Samsung's latest iteration of TouchWiz. The Galaxy S III is an Android phone, and yes it runs the latest and greatest 4.0.4, but Samsung made little mention of that. TouchWiz and the company's various branded applications were the stars of the show.

To make it feel more "natural", you tap the lock-screen and little ripples appear, and splish-splash noises are heard. Fortunately, not every part of Samsung's custom UI is pointless gimmickry. Tap and hold the lock-screen, then rotate the phone into a landscape orientation, and it'll unlock straight into the camera app. Pick the phone up and it'll show you any notifications that you might have missed. Samsung isn't the first to do this kind of thing, but it seems eminently sensible; these phones know a lot about their environment, so it's wise to make use of all that data.

S Voice worked some of the time.

Peter Bright

The application that Samsung was most proud of was S Voice, a Siri-like natural language voice control system. A noisy press event isn't the best place to try out something like this, so I don't want to sound too critical, but it wasn't very good. Although Samsung claims it supports both English from both sides of the Atlantic (and a few other languages), it made hard work of my neutral, accent-free British English. When I got it to understand what I asked, it did successfully manage to fulfill some simple requests—telling me about the weather, setting alarms, that kind of thing.

Other times it just seemed a bit stupid.

Peter Bright

The camera app is probably the most important app after phoning and texting apps, and the camera app worked nicely. The phone can take bursts of up to 20 pictures at 3.3 frames a second, with a feature to automatically pick the best picture of the burst (where "best" includes criteria such as "in focus" and "the person is smiling"). It has face detection and you can double tap on a face to zoom in and focus on that face specifically. It'll recognize faces in the picture and tag photos accordingly; it even lets you conveniently send pictures to the people identified in the picture automatically.

I didn't personally try them, but other Samsung apps include S Beam and a pair of AllShare programs.

S Beam is Samsung's 21st century take on IrDA beaming, allowing quick and easy sharing of files, say, between Galaxy S III handsets. It's very similar to Google's Android Beam feature, but has a Samsung twist: as well as slow NFC, it can also use fast Wi-Fi Direct. TVs can get in on the action too with AllShare Play and AllShare Cast. Play lets you play media on TVs via Wi-Fi Direct; Cast duplicates the phone's screen on the TV. For TVs that don't support Wi-Fi Direct (which I believe to be most of them), Samsung is releasing a dongle that plugs into an HDMI port.

Another thing I didn't try—because they're not turned on yet—is Samsung's new Hub features. The company already has a subscription music service, Samsung Music Hub. It's extending this with a scan-and-match feature, similar to Apple's iTunes Match; it'll search your hard disk for songs, and allow you to play anything it finds from the cloud. It seems that Samsung is also greatly expanding the number of songs available; currently it boasts 12 million, and this is being upgraded to 17 million. To Music Hub, Samsung is also adding Video Hub, offering film purchases and rentals. These services, as well as existing ones like Samsung's Games Hub, go head-to-head with Google's Play. I imagine the most important factor will be which one has the things you want to buy.

The software felt fast and responsive for the most part. There was the occasional sluggish animation or slight delay while scrolling, but in general, the software felt smooth, if a bit complex and busy. Performance should be good with that processor; while I didn't have time for any serious benchmarking, it ran SunSpider in 1,488 milliseconds. This is fast; it beats the HTC One X, though is still a little behind the x86-powered Lava XOLO X900.

Disappointingly, for all its sensor prowess, the phone doesn't come with a stylus. Samsung's advertising for the Galaxy Note has me convinced that "life needs more than texts and smiley-faces;" a stylus (with a proper digitizer, for accurate drawing) is clearly something we should be demanding from our handset manufacturers. Alas, the Galaxy S III has none. Samsung will sell the C Pen, a capacitive stylus, but it doesn't come with the phone, nor is there a garage/holster in the phone to store the stylus. It's almost as if the Galaxy Note advertisement were lying, and that in actual fact, humans can cope just fine with texts and smiley-faces.

To help sell the Galaxy S III, Samsung is expanding its use of "Pop-Up" retail units, which will operate as concessions within other stores and retail locations.

Peter Bright

Other accessories include docks and chargers. The phone supports wireless charging. Samsung claimed to be the first here, which obviously isn't true, since the Palm Pre could be charged wirelessly too. There might be some missing nuance, such as the first to charge wirelessly with a specific technology (there was some mention of "resonance") or something. The personnel on the show floor seemed vague.

The Galaxy S III is a conservative evolution of the Galaxy S II. The hardware is feature-packed, and TouchWiz has a number of interesting and potentially useful unique features. Android purists will be disappointed at the custom software, but for everyone else, it'll be well worth consideration when it's released later this month. It's just a pity that for all the innovation on the inside, and all the work that Samsung has done on the software, the whole thing is wrapped up in a package that's so mediocre. Flagship phones deserve better than flimsy plastic.

I had high hopes for this phone. But I find it ugly and cheap looking. The pentile screen is fine with me. My eyes are so bad that the iPad 3 screen looks the same as the iPad 2 screen; I'm going to try to get some new glasses soon. Touch-wiz is fine with me too. One feature that wasn't mentioned here was that when you are texting if you put the phone up to your hear, it will call the person you are texting. Little stuff like that I like. But the design and look of this phone really killed it phone and I am disappointed. I don't know why because I probably wasn't going to get it. I might buy the Gnex off contract, but I can't upgrade for another two years and the S3 isn't the phone that's worth buying off contract.

Still waiting for someone to discuss the menu key...why do no authors make any mention of it. This is completely stupid and an antithesis to ICS's design goals. Now any app that uses the new action bar will have its overflow button hidden because a physical menu key is present...exactly what Google was trying to get away from as it hurts usability and hides functionality. I guess no one cares about Samsung using old recycled designs and not giving any thought to UI intuitiveness.

The stats look fantastic, and overall it looks nice, but I'm very concerned about a couple points.

First, the plastic. The real problem with plastic - and what you didn't mention in the article - is that plastic wears much easier than metal or glass. It scratches, deeply too, with far less effort than metal. It ends up making a phone that feels cheap to begin with look cheap in short order, and feel awful to hold.

More, though, the pentile display. Now, to be fair I haven't seen the SIII's display, but the previous pentile displays looked downright terrible with certain colours, straight edges and most importantly text. I assume that you can make a pentile display look awesome with a sufficiently high resolution, but unless you've got poor eyesight I don't see how one can give a pass on the current pentile displays. I just don't understand why Samsung - and a few other Android vendors - insist on using display technology that just looks bad.

Saying it's ok if you don't look carefully is awful. This is something you're going to be looking closely at fairly frequently: It's a small screen you hold in the palm of your hand. Now, maybe I'm just a crazy freak, but artifacts you can only see if you look closely are artifacts I'll see every freaking time I look at it because I know they are there.

Who buys a phone based on the way it looks? I would think weight, ergonomic feel, functionality, battery life, and so on would all be far more important than how it looks.

I guess I don't buy a phone to admire it...

... but you do have to look at it. I don't care how I look personally because I can avoid mirrors easily enough, but if my gadgets are too ugly (for me) it's annoying. Not that it would apply to this phone, unless this plastic feel is really bad. I'll have to touch one to make that call, of course.

The desktop the way it's set up in the first screenshot looks horrid. Icons are ugly and blend in the background, text is lost in the weather widget, search box looks stupid. It looks like a jumbled mess.

The desktop the way it's set up in the first screenshot looks horrid. Icons are ugly and blend in the background, text is lost in the weather widget, search box looks stupid. It looks like a jumbled mess.

I agree, but I don't know if that's because other people had been messing around or they come like that, so I'm hesitant to judge that kind of thing.

If they actually ship like that, it's not just jumbled; in my view, it's overwhelming.

I don't understand the fascination with quad-core A-9 SoCs. It's becoming dated configuration and in quad-core form gobbles battery. Luckily when this phone is US bound it will end up with some Krait goodness. If you have doubts about Krait being superior, compare the ATT edition of the One X to the world edition.

Why is there such a drive to make every piece of consumer electronics as thin as possible? I'd rather have a phone that's twice as thick and that uses that space to house a double capacity battery. I'd rather have a TV with a full matrix LED array with local dimming than a super thin one that has to result to edge lighting. I'd rather have a laptop with a full array of ports, room for a hard drive as well as an SSD, and an optical drive over something that's thin for the sake of being thin. The focus on style over substance is distressing.

As far as this phone goes, it seems OK. Is the official word that the eventual LTE versions will have a different processor? Do LTE phones also support HSPA+ for those of us who live in areas that haven't been upgraded to LTE yet, but want to take advantage of the greater speeds of HSPA+ now while still being future-proof?

The biggest disappointment is the screen resolution. It's a shame the 1080p screen didn't come to pass, as that would have moved this to the top of my list for my next phone. As it is there doesn't seem to be anything that special about this compared to the Galaxy Nexus, and the Galaxy Note still retains ultimate resolution bragging rights. At least with the Galaxy Nexus you don't have to put up with a bastardized implementation of Android (does Touchwiz do anything good other than screw with the UI that Google developed as the optimum solution for Android phones?)

Who buys a phone based on the way it looks? I would think weight, ergonomic feel, functionality, battery life, and so on would all be far more important than how it looks.

I guess I don't buy a phone to admire it...

When A phone cost 200 or more on contract and around 600-700 off contract looks matter to me. It's not the only thing that matters though.Even if I found this phone to look plain,I would love this phone. But its looks bad to me. People buy phones to use them, just like laptops, cars, etc. Just because I want my devices to look as well as they perform doesn't mean I admire them. Edit:typos Also I don't even know why I responded, because it's just silly to connect caring about aesthetics of a device to admiring the device.

I don't understand the fascination with quad-core A-9 SoCs. It's becoming dated configuration and in quad-core form gobbles battery. Luckily when this phone is US bound it will end up with some Krait goodness. If you have doubts about Krait being superior, compare the ATT edition of the One X to the world edition.

I am a purely functional engineer type, so incorporate that knowledge with this comment:

Am I the only one who embraces plastic. I absolutely spiked my nexus s (I tried to catch it on the way down and instead smacked it downward) into a concrete path and.... I have a nick on the back of my phone. How many cracked cases/screens do we have to see (I'm looking at you iPhone 4 and 4S) before we embrace the "cheap" feel?

The stylus is one of the things I dislike about the Galaxy Note. I used an AT&T 8525 Windows Mobile 6.0 phone for a couple years (rebadged HTC something) and I lost quite a few styluses (styli?). WM6 depended on the stylus, and it was a PITA to have to pop it out or peck at tiny buttons if it wasn't there.

Android was developed for touch interface and all apps should be optimized for fingers. If phones start to come with styli then it opens the door to start optimizing design elements and apps for their use, which is a step backwards.

Probably the best and funniest review I've ever read. I love cutting through the marketing hype and giving an honest review. Nicely done, thank you.

Agreed, so many people fall for hype. This is a great review.

I don't care much for this phone, it's way too large. I don't know what they were thinking. We moved from large mobile phones, to teeeeeny mobile phones to large phones again. I just want a nice middle ground that is functional and can maintain a battery life of 3 days+.

I am a purely functional engineer type, so incorporate that knowledge with this comment:

Am I the only one who embraces plastic. I absolutely spiked my nexus s (I tried to catch it on the way down and instead smacked it downward) into a concrete path and.... I have a nick on the back of my phone. How many cracked cases/screens do we have to see (I'm looking at you iPhone 4 and 4S) before we embrace the "cheap" feel?

Good plastic is good. Cheap plastic is cheap. You understand that there's about a million different commercially produced plastics out there in products we buy, right? I realize that those recycling symbols with the numbers in them only go up to about 7, but that doesn't mean that there are only that many different kinds of organic polymer compounds.

The desktop the way it's set up in the first screenshot looks horrid. Icons are ugly and blend in the background, text is lost in the weather widget, search box looks stupid. It looks like a jumbled mess.

I agree, but I don't know if that's because other people had been messing around or they come like that, so I'm hesitant to judge that kind of thing.

If they actually ship like that, it's not just jumbled; in my view, it's overwhelming.

Was the background animated as well? I'd be willing to bet money it was animated. Thereby enhancing the ADD saturation experience. The bright blue LED on the charger really sets the tone on what they're going for. I'll double down that LED pulses too.

Goddamnit every time I see an Android I can't get over just how ugly and unusable the interface looks. Apple and Microsoft managed to make everything look nice even regardless of whatever background you use. It's sad that nobody else gives a shit.

Ah well, when you dump your product for free into a market to boost your base line, you don't really have to care about quality

I am a purely functional engineer type, so incorporate that knowledge with this comment:

Am I the only one who embraces plastic. I absolutely spiked my nexus s (I tried to catch it on the way down and instead smacked it downward) into a concrete path and.... I have a nick on the back of my phone. How many cracked cases/screens do we have to see (I'm looking at you iPhone 4 and 4S) before we embrace the "cheap" feel?

Good plastic is good. Cheap plastic is cheap. You understand that there's about a million different commercially produced plastics out there in products we buy, right? I realize that those recycling symbols with the numbers in them only go up to about 7, but that doesn't mean that there are only that many different kinds of organic polymer compounds.

I'm always amazed to see how many people don't put a protective case around their phone. I've dropped my iPhone many times, but the nice padded leather of the case has kept it safe from harm (plus it keeps the screen from getting messed up by keys/pens/screws/etc in my pocket).

S Voice is an attempt to copy Siri but apparently it is a failure. They blatantly copied iTunes match and AirPlay. The rest is a bunch of gadget features all packaged in a poorly designed phone with cheap plastic and a low quality screen technology.

And finally, the phone is so big that you need a suitcase to transport it!!!!!

Indeed great innovation, Samung is just blatantly copying every features and ideas that Apple come up with and try to sell you a fridge sized phone.

Been seeing conflicting information about which HSPA/UMTS/AWS/[insert acronym here] bands the GSM model will support at high speeds.

Seen some list 1700/1900/2100 implying it would work on t-mobile, while others list bands that would make it ATT only for high speed. Since it will be a cold day in hell before I use the latter, and the CDMA folks gouge almost as much, it is a non starter for me on other carriers. (e.g. to get a rough equivalent of minutes, internet, tethering and VPN support with verizon my monthly cost would be triple, and they own me for 2 years)

Wish I could get a good answer so I can find a new home for my SIM, because its either wait for this or buy an unlocked nexus from google.

I think there's a theme here. Extremely light with a low body density isn't evidence of Samsung choosing to be cheap, it IS Samsung's design esthetic. As is the chrome ring. You can complain about many things regarding Samsung, but inconsistent design esthetic doesn't seem to be one of them. My Samsung Epic has exactly the same esthetic, despite having an integrated keyboard and being, what, 2-3 generations behind the times now. So are the consumer Samsung TV's I've seen, and their computers and screens. Unfortunately for Samsung, most of us (somewhat appropriately) equate a feel of density and rigidity with quality, so this particular esthetic feels quite cheap to us. That and glossy chrome and polished plastic are a mid-2000's fancy(Just look at the original iPhone and 3G), just like beige plastic boxes were a late 1990's phenomenon.

So Samsung's design houses appear 5 years behind the times when it comes to current "high end" styling (which appears to be dense, matte polycarbonate bodies with minimal gloss except for the screen). While they have been slowly changing their esthetic, it has never appeared to be a priority for Sammy. What Samsung's priority has always been is packing the newest, cutting edge internals into their devices. In this, they have been quite successful, and could be seen to be a polar opposite to Apple (who prefer appearance and form over gross internal functionality).

The more I've seen of the two companies compete, the more I realize they both serve unique purposes in the global market. Samsung spurs companies to try to compete on specs, while Apple spur competitors to compete on design. It gives rise to great competitors with increasingly strong design AND tech bases like HTC, Motorola and (possibly now) Nokia. It also weeds out one trick ponies like Blackberry, who can't keep up with either. So way to go Sammy, you've built another powerhouse in a flimsy feeling shell. Gotta love consistency.

I think there's a theme here. Extremely light with a low body density isn't evidence of Samsung choosing to be cheap, it IS Samsung's design esthetic. As is the chrome ring. You can complain about many things regarding Samsung, but inconsistent design esthetic doesn't seem to be one of them.

Dude, you can feel the thing flexing slightly. It's cheap. Their design aesthetic isn't great either. I could forgive the faux chrome ring (though it's ugly) and the high gloss (though it's a pain to photograph, and it's not to my taste), because they're style issues, at least in part. But the feel of flimsiness is just poor.

Samsung has certainly made solid devices (for example, the Omnia 7, which is pleasingly metal-backed). HTC and Nokia are both producing quality plastic phones. For all the song and dance Samsung made about "pebble" and "hyperglaze", it just doesn't look that nice, and doesn't feel very sturdy, and that's disappointing.

S Voice is an attempt to copy Siri but apparently it is a failure. They blatantly copied iTunes match and AirPlay. The rest is a bunch of gadget features all packaged in a poorly designed phone with cheap plastic and a low quality screen technology.

And finally, the phone is so big that you need a suitcase to transport it!!!!!

Indeed great innovation, Samung is just blatantly copying every features and ideas that Apple come up with and try to sell you a fridge sized phone.

Sigh, and it was going so well until you had to start typing...Android (& winmobile) had voice control before apple iDevices did.Airplay is a proprietry version of DLNA.Plastic is nice an absorbant for when i inevitably drop my phone.Pentile has vastly better blacks and brighter colour.Theres a fucking pic of it next to an sgs2 right there, it isnt huge unless you have child sized hands...

Sounds meh, go buy an HTC One X or S. They match up overall in the benchmarks, are already out, have better builds and less Samsung junk to clutter up your interface.

I can see now, thinking about it, why so called "Flagship" phones sell the best. Because most people shell out when there's a new contract, or if not then if they've got enough money to get the best, why no the best? By all I've read the One X or S is a bit better than this all around, and it's not like there's any particular differentiating features. You pick your OS and get the best phone and that's the end of it.

I think there's a theme here. Extremely light with a low body density isn't evidence of Samsung choosing to be cheap, it IS Samsung's design esthetic. As is the chrome ring. You can complain about many things regarding Samsung, but inconsistent design esthetic doesn't seem to be one of them.

Dude, you can feel the thing flexing slightly. It's cheap. Their design aesthetic isn't great either. I could forgive the faux chrome ring (though it's ugly) and the high gloss (though it's a pain to photograph, and it's not to my taste), because they're style issues, at least in part. But the feel of flimsiness is just poor.

Samsung has certainly made solid devices (for example, the Omnia 7, which is pleasingly metal-backed). HTC and Nokia are both producing quality plastic phones. For all the song and dance Samsung made about "pebble" and "hyperglaze", it just doesn't look that nice, and doesn't feel very sturdy, and that's disappointing.

Makes you wonder where all the talk of a ceramic body came from, probably one of the most consistent rumors. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, and it apparently didn't work.